Welcome to College Park, where the only open arms that students will see are those pushing out the door.

With on-campus housing at its lowest availability in years, students looking for housing in the city are increasingly finding themselves in limbo as landlords have fewer incentives to rent and as new developments get pricier – leaving less affordable options.

The lack of housing options is a trend university officials have scrambled to deal with as they seek more funding from private developers to build housing on university land. But for now, students are increasingly depending on off-campus housing in a changing city that has taken steps to temper a flood of student residents and discourage landlords and private developers from renting to students.

City officials have expressed dismay as families struggle to buy homes in the area because short supply has driven up housing prices. College Park City Council members – themselves all homeowners – have moved in recent years to legislate tax incentives for new homeowners who don’t rent out the property and requiring new housing developments to keep a large percentage of their units owner occupied.

For most students, high demand has translated to equally high prices, and landlords at developments such as Parkside and the University View are quickly learning that parents with deep pockets are increasingly willing to pay for their kids to live in safe, although not necessarily affordable, housing.

In some off-campus housing, especially the single family homes on the east side of Route 1, high prices are driving students to break county code regulations limiting city housing to five tenants, a violation city officials are set on clamping down on.

“The city has always urged the university to provide more on-campus housing,” said the city’s planning director Terry Schum, who said the city was disappointed when the university pushed back plans it made to build more student housing.

“Obviously, I think students should have a choice and I think that is what the private sector is providing,” Schum said. She added the city has been receptive to Environmental Protection Agency studies that encourage more student housing on Route 1, and officials are hopeful that redevelopment efforts on soon-to-be developed East campus and the Knox Box area will provide more housing opportunities.

But recent comments by city officials, such as Mayor Stephen Brayman warning a developer that he did not want a recently proposed development near City Hall to become a building full of “animal houses,” could be read by some as a move toward excluding students from future developments.

College Park Landlords’ Committee chairman Dave Dorsch said city decisions to impose rent control, make Old Town a historic district, and offer subsidies to homeowners for not renting out property are hindering options for students and driving up housing prices.

Dorsch bristled at the suggestion that it was the landlords who were overcharging students in a city where the vacancy rate is only 2.8 percent, according to a marketing study done for the university.

“If I listened to the City Council, all landowners are rich and all are making a killing,” Dorsch said. “With the house prices the way they are today, I don’t see anybody making huge profits.”

“Some landlords believe the city is making it more difficult to do business, but the city would say they’re passing laws for the safety of the community,” Schum said.

Some of those laws include increased efforts to crack down on houses exceeding the five tenant limit because of complaints by residents, something they can enforce by issuing $1,000 fines to landlords who break the rules. At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, City Manager Director of Public Services Bob Ryan discussed new methods to find perpetrators.

One such rule breaker, who declined to be named because he did not want to get his landlord in trouble, admitted that the house he rents, which is a duplex and can have up to 10 tenants, exceeds the limit because 13 people live there.

“The landlord let us have 3 people so we could afford to live here.” he said, adding that there is even an extra room for a 14th occupant to live.”We live comfortably, we’re all best friends, I couldn’t ask for a better place to live.”

With such a spacious house, he said there was no trouble finding students anxious to move in to the comfortable “mansion.”

“One of my best friends [at the View] paid $960 for his apartment. My personal bedroom is about 3 to 4 times bigger than his. I kinda feel like I have a better deal,” he said.

This approach to finding housing is shared by others, who believe that not only are places like the View not a good deal, but that they’re pricing out a large portion of students.

“They’re catering toward the higher class,” said freshmen letters and sciences major Sylvia Vidal. “I can’t have a job and pay for rent and all my books. My parents can’t afford it. I think a lot of parents can’t afford it.”

Vidal, who says she has to commute to school because she would otherwise have to pay for her own housing, said that she saw few options off-campus for students like herself.

“When it comes to students having to pay for it themselves, they’re out of luck [because] they’re making extreme housing like the View,” she said, adding that if the new buildings were made without amenities like pools and tanning beds there would be far more affordable housing options for students.

Others, like junior Samantha Bement, who commutes after living in the View last year until her rent was raised from $755 a month to $805, agree.

“The people who live there are the more spoiled type. I think they take advantage of the fact that mommy and daddy are paying for everything,” Bement said. “I paid most of my rent so I ended up having to leave.”

While the university recognizes the higher costs of living in the expensive high rises, officials in Off-Campus Housing Services have said there are plenty of other options for students around the campus.

“There are lots of different kinds of people and they’re all looking for different kinds of things,” the coordinator for off-campus housing Nurredina Workman said last month. “It’s a class kind of distinction. If you can afford to live there, you’re going to live there.”

John Garland, the coordinator for off-campus student involvement has said that it has always been a struggle to find housing for the 60 percent of students who live off the campus.

“I do think that you could say that students are looking to campus to provide more housing because it’s more affordable,” Garland said in an interview last month. “It’s fairly obvious that the campus sees a trend in needing on campus housing,”

Adding to the demand for off-campus housing is more freshmen wanting to live on the campus and a lack of new facilities being built on the campus. For the first time in 20 years, the waiting list for on-campus housing broke 1,000 people.

David Daddio, a student running for the open District 3 city council seat in January’s special elections, said that neither the university nor the city are stepping up to provide the student housing, leaving private developers to run amuck with prices.

“The city doesn’t want the students live in the neighborhood, they don’t want them to live in the new developments, apparently they want them to live on campus but obviously there are no new dormitories,” he said. “It’s not really clear to me where the city, where the university, want the students to live.”

Contact reporter Owen Praskievicz at praskieviczdbk@gmail.com